Motives to drink or not to drink: longitudinal relations among personality, motives, and alcohol use across adolescence and early adulthood

Abstract

Background: Adolescent selective intervention programs for alcohol have focused on the identification of youth at risk as a function of personality and associated alcohol-related cognitions. Research into the role of personality, drinking motivations, and alcohol-related outcomes has generally focused exclusively on motives to drink. We expand on this literature by focusing on both motives to drink and motives not to drink across time from adolescence to early adulthood in a community sample.

Methods: Using 3 waves of data from 3 cohorts from the Rutgers Health and Human Development Project (n = 1,380; 49.4% women), we modeled the influence of baseline alcohol consumption, disinhibition (DIS), and harm avoidance (ages 15, 18, and 21 years) on drinking motives and motives not to drink 3 years later (ages 18, 21, and 24 years) and alcohol use and drinking-related problems 7 years subsequently (ages 25, 28, and 31 years).

Results: Path analytic models were relatively invariant across cohort. Across cohorts, DIS and baseline alcohol consumption related to later positive reinforcement drinking motives, but less consistency was found for the prediction of negative reinforcement motives to drink. While positive reinforcement motives were associated with greater alcohol consumption and problems 7 years later, negative reinforcement motives were generally associated with problems alone. Positive reinforcement motives for drinking mediated relations between baseline consumption and later consumption. However, results were mixed when considering DIS as a predictor and drinking problems as an outcome. Similarly, personality and baseline consumption related to later motives not to drink and such motives predicted subsequent alcohol-related problems. However, mediation was not generally supported for pathways through motives to abstain.

Conclusions: The results of this study replicate and extend previous longitudinal findings with youth and add to the growing literature on motivations not to engage in alcohol use.

Figure 1

Path analytic results for drinking motives model by cohort. The direct pathways between personality and outcomes and associations between variables at the same time point were modeled are presented in Table 2. Pos Re: Positive reinforcement drinking motives; Neg Re: Negative reinforcement drinking motives; All included pathways were significant at p <.05

Figure 2

Path analytic results for abstinence motives model by cohort. The direct pathways between personality and outcomes and associations between variables at the same time point are presented in Table 3. Control: Loss of control abstinence motives; Conseq: Adverse consequences abstinence motives; Convict: Convictions abstinence motives. All included pathways were significant at p <.05.